


Games

by VeryMauve



Category: Original Work
Genre: Cheating, Emotional Sadism, M/M, Monogamy, Orientation Change, Trans Male Character, Trans/Cis Relationship, Transphobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-21
Updated: 2018-09-21
Packaged: 2019-07-15 03:05:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 8,469
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16054142
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VeryMauve/pseuds/VeryMauve





	1. Chapter 1

I took a deep breath and opened the door.

“Evening,” Dale said, smiling sheepishly. “Not too late, are we?”

“No, no, in fact we’re not even set up yet, really. Come in, come in, you must be freezing.”

As I stood aside to let Dale in, I noticed the figure beside him. Partly in shadow, with the streetlight gleaming amber on one side of his hair and jacket. He looked up, and now the whole of his face was visible to me. I saw sharp cheekbones and large, dark eyes, and then I looked away, shaken.

“You’ve not met Chris, have you?” Dale was grinning now, sure of himself. “Hope you don’t mind, I thought I’d bring him along to make up the numbers, you know, since Elaine couldn’t come.”

“Oh, of course.” Polite autopilot took over. “Nice to meet you, Chris, come in.”

The three of us went into the living room, where Sarah was putting the game board down on the coffee table. She seemed content and peaceful, until she looked up and met my eyes. Her gaze moved over to Dale, then to the stranger standing beside us, and then she too looked away. Her face flushed slightly. Dale introduced the boy to Sarah, rambling on about how they’d met and why Elaine couldn’t make it, and I listened, nodded, laughed on cue. My eyes kept drifting onto Chris. His hair obscured his eyes, but I could see the smooth skin of his cheek, light brown and flawless. I could see the smile on his lips, a little mocking, aloof perhaps, as if he knew he could do better than all this. I could see enough.

“Right then,” Dale said, “enough chitchat, let’s get down to it.”

He sat down, and told Chris to take the seat next to Sarah. I sat opposite the boy, with Sarah on my left and Dale on my right.

“Three boys to one girl, eh?” Dale said, grinning at Sarah. “Hope you’re not feeling outnumbered.”

She looked at me, with that smile, the smile that I was never quite sure of, and laughed. “No, not at all, actually.”

I let it slide, filed it away for the next argument, since there was always another one on the horizon. We played the game as if there was nothing wrong. The conversation quickly separated into two branches; Dale talked at me about his holiday plans, while Chris chatted to Sarah about their apparently shared love of godawful films. She could barely tear her eyes away from him to take her turn. I watched her face, saw her attempting countless seductive smiles, coquettish giggles, all the things that once attracted me, and now it just looked like pantomime. She was trying so hard. The boy soaked up every bit of attention, quite naturally, I suppose, since he must have been used to it. He really was very handsome. I couldn’t get over how perfectly smooth his face was, not a single shadow or blemish. I wondered if he wore makeup. I wondered if the smell of foundation would irritate me on a man, the way it did on Sarah. I was looking at his mouth, at the pale cupid’s bow, at the hint of deeper pink flesh where his lips met, when I realised the boy was looking back at me.

Our eyes met. He smiled, as if he was about to laugh. I could hear Sarah’s voice rattling on in the background, but it seemed a world away. Then he turned back to her, turned his full attention on her and laughed at the joke she’d just told. His laugh was warm and genuine, his expression relaxed and friendly. He looked as if he could feel all the things for her that were dead in me.

I put my drink down and excused myself.

The bathroom mirror showed me more than I wanted to see. I was sallow, weary, old. A few years ago, I’d looked so young for my age. I was being carded regularly well into my thirties. Now my age had caught up with me, and I looked like exactly what I was. Forty, tired, stifled, drowning. Grey in my hair, permanent five o’clock shadow, deep lines around my eyes and mouth. Laughter lines, Sarah called them. She’d aged faster than me, of course. The strain of supporting me, she said. _Support_. Funny how scaffolding can end up feeling like iron bars.

I went back into the living room, and sat down again.

“Feeling better?” Dale grinned up at me, then turned to the others. “Can’t handle his drink, you see.”

“He’s a lightweight,” Sarah said, with no laughter in her voice. “You’re not a lightweight too, are you, Chris?”

He finished his drink in one, tipping his head back, exposing the smooth arch of his throat. “Don’t underestimate me,” he laughed, dabbing at his mouth with his fingertips, “I might look delicate, but I’ve got the constitution of an ox.”

Sarah smiled and topped up her own glass. “Well, we’ll see.”


	2. Chapter 2

He wasn’t the first man I’d been attracted to. I’d been having those feelings for years, long before I transitioned. I just wouldn’t admit it to myself. I suppose I was originally a closeted bisexual. I really did like women, at one point. That part wasn’t a lie. But as the years went on the attraction faded, and now I could barely remember what it felt like to desire a woman. Now I just went through the motions. Every good-looking boy I met was a temptation, an opportunity to cross the line, but I’d never acted on the urge. I just stuffed those feelings down and kept telling myself I wasn’t gay. It never got any easier to do so; in fact, it seemed to get harder as time went by, as if I was wearing away my willpower, grinding it down a little more every time I saw a pretty boy’s face and turned away, and now my self-control was tatty and threadbare. Now it felt like only a matter of time before the last strands snapped.

Chris quickly became a regular part of our games nights. Sometimes Dale brought Elaine as well, and all five of us crammed ourselves in around the table. More often, it was just Chris and Dale, and as the weeks went on, Elaine seemed to almost always be busy. Sarah noticed, of course, and she naturally put it down to Dale and Elaine having relationship problems.

“You know, Dale,” she said, one night, “I feel like I haven’t seen Elaine for months, what’ve you done with her?”

He shrugged. “She’s too cool for board games these days. Anyway, it clashes with her roller derby, and you know what she’s like, if you asked her to choose between derby and her grandma, granny’d be out the window.”

“Hmm,” Sarah said, “are you sure you haven’t traded her in for a younger model?” She nodded towards Chris, who was watching the two of them quietly, with an odd little smile on his lips.

Dale looked flustered, and seemed unable to find the words to respond.

“Don’t be silly,” Chris laughed, “he’s not my type.”

Sarah laughed too, and after a moment Dale joined in. I heard myself laugh too. It was a joke. Of course Chris didn’t like men, any more than Dale did. They were normal, and I was the anomaly. A punchline made flesh. And I knew, I really did know it was ridiculous, I knew how much the three of them would mock me if they found out. I knew, and yet I couldn’t stop wanting him. I couldn’t stop noticing the grace of his hands, or the melody of his laughter, or the way the colour of his eyes seemed to shift from hazel to russet depending on the light. I couldn’t stop fantasising about him. After each visit, after he and Dale had gone home, after Sarah had gone to bed, I’d take a long shower with the bathroom door locked, so that I could silently masturbate to the thought of him. The image of him, of what I wanted to do to him, was like an itch I couldn’t resist scratching. I couldn’t stop, and the craving just got worse and worse.


	3. Chapter 3

One night, I opened the door expecting the two of them, and found Chris standing on the doorstep alone. It was a warm night, and instead of his usual leather jacket, he was wearing a velvet one, a blazer the colour of black cherries. His shirt was thin and loose, and he had the top couple of buttons undone. His throat and collarbone looked so delicate, almost like they shouldn’t be exposed to the air, as if a strong breeze might bruise them.

“Dale can’t make it,” he said, smiling at me.

“Oh.” I stood there for a moment, transfixed. We looked at each other, silently. His eyes were full of easy confidence, and mine were so parched with the thirst for beauty that he must have felt he was being devoured before I’d even laid a hand on him. “Oh, well, come in,” I finally managed to say, and then without thinking, I added, “You look lovely,” as if I was talking to a woman.

“Thank you,” he said, like it was the most natural thing in the world.

Sarah’s eyes lit up when I brought Chris into the living room, and as I watched her fawn over him, I wondered whether I seemed as pathetic to Chris as she seemed to me. Perhaps I seemed pathetic to both of them.

We settled down around the table, and Chris started talking to Sarah excitedly about a film festival the local theatre was putting on. I could see the punchline coming a mile off.

“So I thought we could go together next week,” he said, as she beamed at him. Then he turned to me. “You’re welcome to come along too, of course, if it won’t be too boring for you?”

He had that sweet, slightly mocking smile on his lips again. I knew I was supposed to respond to it as a challenge or an insult, but all I could think about was sitting in a darkened theatre next to him, his thigh next to mine, his hand on the armrest, near enough to grab. The crowd around us would be absorbed in the film, oblivious to anything we did in the shadows. It would be so tempting to reach out my hand and brush it against his, just a gentle test, just to see how he’d react. He might lurch away from me and grimace. He might laugh at me, or shake his head and pity me. Or he might not.

“No, thanks, I’ll pass,” I said, shaking the thought out of my head. “I’d quite like an evening to myself anyway, to be honest.”

Too honest, perhaps. Sarah looked surprisingly hurt, for someone who’d spent the past half hour relentlessly flirting with another man.

“Just the two of us, then,” he said, turning the full-beam smile back onto her. She seemed happy to have his attention, but the wounded look in her eyes persisted for the rest of the evening. Even after Chris had gone home, she was quietly hostile. She wouldn’t meet my eyes, wouldn’t spend more than a few minutes in the same room as me, and as I went upstairs to the bathroom, I could hear her stamping around and slamming drawers in the kitchen. When she eventually came upstairs, I was in the bedroom, getting dried after my shower. She stood in the doorway and stared at me, not saying a word.

“What?” I said, staring back. “If you’ve got something to say, just say it.”

She scowled. “You don’t even care, do you?”

“About what?”

“About what’s going on right under your nose.”

“Oh?” I tried to keep my expression neutral, but I could feel my face twisting into a sneer. “Is there something going on that’s worth my attention?”

She shook her head. “What’s wrong with you? Any normal man would—”

“Yes, well, I’m not a normal man, am I? I’m surprised you’ve forgotten that, since you’re usually so keen to rub my nose in it.”

“That’s not what I mean!” Her voice was rough and taut, almost a growl. “You always twist what I say. I can’t win, can I? There’s no point even talking to you.”

I shrugged. “You’re right, there probably isn’t.”

I got into my side of the bed and turned over. I could hear her getting ready for bed, breathing raggedly, but not quite crying. As we lay next to each other in the dark, I wondered what Chris was doing.


	4. Chapter 4

Not long after that argument, Sarah began going out on her own in the evenings. She never said where she was going, but I knew she was with Chris. He stopped coming to our games nights, which meant that I only ever saw him when he sometimes walked Sarah home at the end of an evening together. When she was out with him, I couldn’t stop thinking about what they might be doing. I’d sit in an armchair, my eyes trained on the seat Chris usually chose, and I’d picture the scene. Were they kissing? Were his lips soft and delicate as they brushed against hers? Were they embracing? I imagined those bony arms wrapped around her, and the sharp angles of his shoulders and hips pressed against her. Was he naked? Was his body as smooth as his face? I balled my hands up into fists and imagined the feeling of his skin under her hands, under my hands, under my body, our bodies clasped together, his head thrown back and that fragile throat exposed to my lips, my teeth, and as much as I wanted to fuck him, I wanted to hurt him too, to make it rough and raw, to leave him as bruised and tender as I felt inside.

Sometimes I waited in the living room until she got home, but more often I waited upstairs, and watched through the spare bedroom window, hoping that he’d be with her when she appeared at the gate. Even a glimpse of him would do, even from a distance. He always seemed so animated, so full of life. She seemed subdued, and sometimes when I caught sight of her face, I could see the same sullen expression she often gave me. I put it down to Sarah being impossible to please; even an affair with a beautiful boy didn’t make her happy. I noticed, though, that they never kissed goodbye. I wondered whether it was some strange kind of politeness on Chris’s part. Perhaps he simply thought it was rude to flaunt what he was doing so openly.

This routine of secret trysts and chaste goodbyes had been going on for several weeks when Dale finally brought the issue up. We were in a pub together, just the two of us, which was a rare enough occurrence to warn me that something wasn’t right. The conversation hovered around lightweight topics until Dale was on his fourth drink, and I was partway through my second.

“Yeah,” he said, nodding to himself. “Yeah, look, there’s no nice way of saying this, so I’m just going to come right out with it.”

“Sounds ominous, but go on.”

“So, Sarah goes out on her own a lot, right?”

“Yes, she does.”

“Well, the thing is, she’s not on her own.” He looked pained and guilty, as if he was the one about to confess to infidelity. “She’s with Chris.”

I nodded. “I know.”

“You know? What d’you mean, you know?” He sounded incredulous.

“I know that’s where she’s going.”

“And you just let her go?”

“I don’t own her, Dale.”

“She’s your girlfriend!” Now he didn’t sound guilty, he sounded like the injured party. “You should be putting a stop to it. If it was Elaine, well, we’d have had words about it, and if it carried on I’d give the other guy what was coming to him.”

“Oh, here we go,” I laughed. “Don’t you ever get tired of playing the caveman?”

“I don’t understand you,” he said, shaking his head. “Some pretty boy’s out there doing god knows what to your girlfriend three times a week, and you’re not bothered at all?”

I shrugged. “What do you want me to say?”

He shook his head again. “I wish I’d never introduced her to Chris in the first place. I thought it might snap you out of all this, it might get your blood up, I don’t know. I thought you’d warm up to Sarah again, if you had a rival. I should have left it alone.”

“Well,” I said, finishing my drink. “We can at least agree on that.”


	5. Chapter 5

Sarah and I began to lead almost entirely separate lives. We shared a bed, and sometimes passed each other in the hallway, but we hardly spoke. The games nights ceased altogether, and we socialised separately, as if we’d already broken up. The skeleton of the relationship remained, but the flesh had rotted away long ago.

About a month after the last games night, I was in the house alone, enjoying the peace and quiet after Sarah had gone out for the evening. She’d been gone for an hour or so when someone knocked on the door. I didn’t hurry to answer it, since I thought it was most likely one of the neighbours bringing a parcel around. When I opened the door, I found Chris standing there, alone, smiling, holding a bottle of wine. He was wearing the velvet jacket again, with tight jeans and another flimsy, slightly sheer shirt. He looked like he was on his way to a party.

 “Sarah’s not in,” I said, haltingly.

“I know,” he said, smiling up at me. “I came to see you.”

“Oh.” I felt unreal, as if all this was a dream. I stood aside, and beckoned him in. He went straight through into the living room as I locked the door, as easily and confidently as a cat sauntering into a strange house. I followed him, and found him standing by the fireplace. He’d set the wine down on the coffee table, and was preening in the mirror hung over the mantel.

“Why?” I said, as my mind finally managed to catch up with the situation.

He turned around to face me. “Why what?”

“Why did you come to see me?”

He smiled. “I haven’t seen you for a while. I missed you.”

“You missed me?”

“Yes,” he said, shrugging off his jacket, “and I think you missed me, too.” He draped the jacket over the back of the sofa, and took the wine into the kitchen. I just stood and watched as he busied himself opening the bottle and pouring out two glasses. With his back to me, I could let my eyes feast on him without reservation. That night it was his self-assurance that really got to me, far more than his physical beauty. The ease with which he took up space, as if it was meant for him, as if he graced the room with his presence. The certainty that he was welcome. It was intoxicating.

“Here,” he said, holding out a glass. “It’s easier if you’re relaxed.”

 “What’s easier?”

He laughed gently. “Well, giving up the pretence of naivety, for a start.”

I downed half the glass, but I barely tasted it. He was so close to me, the scent of him filled my senses and left no room for anything else. As I drank he came closer still, until there were only a few inches of emptiness between us. I’d never noticed how much shorter than me Chris was until then, until he was standing right next to me, tipping his face up to hold my gaze, close enough that if I wanted to, I could bend my head and kiss him. It would be so easy, and yet it was impossible. Every I’d fantasised about, every thought I’d had, everything I’d said to him, I could explain all of that away as confusion, idle speculation, an urge for novelty. But if I kissed him, it would all become real.

“You keep a very tight grip on yourself, don’t you?” He was smiling, stroking his fingertip over the stem of his wineglass. “What do you think would happen if you let go?”

“I…” Trailing off, I looked away from him, at the photos on the mantelpiece. “I’d lose all of this.”

“All of this?” he said, softly. “Wouldn’t you say it’s already lost?”

I kept looking at the photos, the ones we took years ago, when we were still happy. I couldn’t recognise the people in them. A grinning young man, shirtless on a sunny beach, with his arm around a beaming woman. The first year I’d been able to go out in the sun without anything covering my scars. We’d run around on that beach like a pair of little children, splashing in the water, chasing each other, shrieking with laughter. It seemed like a scene from someone else’s life.

“I’d have nothing,” I said, letting my eyes return to him.

He smiled. “You’d have me. Do you really want anything else?”

I couldn’t speak. I could barely think. I put the glass down and pulled him into my arms, crushed him to me, and he went with the motion smoothly, gliding into my embrace as if nothing could be more natural. The moment I touched him, I was lost. His body was narrow and bony, so different, so wonderfully different to anyone I’d held before, and the delicacy of his frame made me want to tighten my grip, to make him gasp, to bruise that smooth skin. He tilted his chin up, offered me his mouth, and I took it. The slightest hint of stubble grazed me as I kissed him, scraping against mine with perfect friction. His mouth was warm and soft, by turns yielding and hungry, and it seemed so new to me that every other kiss I’d had seemed like a paltry rehearsal. This was real. This was what I’d been afraid of; I knew that letting myself go meant I’d never look back. And of course, that meant risk.

“Wait,” I said, pulling back, “wait, Chris.”

“What’s wrong?” His arms wound around my neck, and his breath stroked my cheek as he spoke. “Are you worried she’ll walk in on us?”

“It’s not that,” I stammered, “I just need to tell you something first.”

“Alright,” he said, pulling away a little bit, so that he could look me in the eye. “What is it?”

“Well, I’m trans.”

He smiled. “Oh, okay.”

“You get what that means?”

“I’ve been with trans men before, don’t worry.” He laughed, as if it was a silly concern, and reached up to kiss me. “Just tell me what you want.”

And I did. I grabbed him, kissed him, let my hands run over the sharp contours of his body, and all the while I told him want I wanted to do to him, all the things I’d been dreaming of for months, the things I was willing to throw my normal life away for, the things I couldn’t live without. He revelled in it, as if each word of desire was sustenance to him. Upstairs, in the bedroom, on the same unhappy bed I slept in every night, I stripped him naked and fucked him. On his back, to watch his face. On his hands and knees, for the roughness. Against the wall, against the mirror, on the floor, everywhere. All the sex I could have been having, everything I’d been missing for years, I wanted to taste every bit of it. He came in my hand as I fucked him, shaking and gasping my name. I came with his mouth on my cock, crying out, wordless and full of joy, at the rightness of it all, the way it all fit, at the overwhelming bliss of sex without dysphoria, without doubt, without fear.

Afterwards, he lay face-down on the bed, watching me over his shoulder as I tidied up.

“We can do this again, you know,” he said, treading delicately, “if you like.”

I smiled at him. “Well, she’s out tomorrow night.”


	6. Chapter 6

Chris began to visit me every time I had the house to myself. If Sarah went out unexpectedly, I’d text him an invitation, and he’d be there in half an hour, as if he’d dropped everything to see me. Sex was always the first thing on both our minds, but afterwards we’d lie on the bed together, or I’d sit on the sofa with him curled up in my arms, talking, listening to music, making plans. Having finally gotten what I wanted, I wanted more. More sex, certainly, but companionship too; I wanted to get to know him, and he was more than happy to indulge me. Sometimes the sex was slow and exploratory, but often it was explosively quick, and we found ourselves with hours of free time together, to laze around and talk, _really_ talk, with more depth and more verve than any conversation I’d had before. Books were our main topic, since Chris seemed to have read far more than any twenty-five-year-old I’d ever encountered. He recommended novels I’d never heard of, books no straight man would risk reading, which I bought in e-book form and secretly devoured, away from Sarah’s eyes, in between his visits. To return the favour, I recommended music I thought would appeal to him, and my choices pleased and amused him equally. The first time he flicked through my record collection, he smiled and said, “Did you honestly ever think you were straight?”

His visits were little slices of vitality between long hours of dead time. They rejuvenated me, and at times felt that I could continue like that forever, enduring the time I spent with Sarah, as long as I had the promise of seeing Chris. I wondered if she felt the same, or whether the sheen had worn off for her. She’d begun spending more time at home, frustratingly. Occasionally she’d get a text message and flush bright red, eyes watering, then slam her way upstairs to the bedroom, where I could hear her crying quietly if I passed the doorway. I didn’t ask about it. I suppose I didn’t want to intrude. If I’d argued with Chris, she was the last person I’d want to confide in, and I assumed she felt the same.

Since I had the house to myself less and less, I started visiting Chris at his flat. The dynamic began to reverse; he’d text me when he was free, and I’d drop everything and take a cab to his place. I’m sure Sarah knew I was going out to see someone—I had to take my bag of accoutrements, since packing hard wasn’t an option, and she knew exactly what that little rucksack contained—but I doubted she realised who I was visiting. She’d assume it was some other woman, a girl from work, someone I’d met in the pub with Dale, something like that. I enjoyed the secrecy, in a way, but it felt like walking a tightrope, and I knew it couldn’t go on forever.

“I was thinking,” I said to Chris, as we lay together on his bed.

He looked up at me, with just a little hint of worry in his eyes. “What about?”

“I think I need to tell Sarah.”

His face brightened. “About us?”

“Well, not specifically. I don’t think she needs to know the details. But I need to tell her it’s not working between me and her. I need to tell her I’m seeing someone else.”

“You’re right.” He nodded. “Are you going to tell her straight away?”

I pictured the scene, the recriminations, the shouting, the tears. “Maybe not right away. Now’s probably not the right time.”

He laughed. “Well, whenever you’re ready.”

But I was never ready. For days afterwards, I kept edging towards beginning that conversation with Sarah, and then backing away at the last minute. It never seemed to be the right time. I was tired, she was tired, we were busy, one or the other of us had something important planned for the following day, which I didn’t want to spoil. I just kept putting it off, again and again, until time ran out and circumstances made the decision for me.

She’d gone out shopping for the afternoon, and within an hour of her leaving, I was fucking Chris on the sofa, trying out the new prosthetic I’d bought especially for him. He could take much more than anyone I’d slept with before, so I’d bought the most imposing piece of equipment I could find, and it turned out to be worth its considerable weight in gold. He loved it, and I loved watching him squirm and grind underneath me, I loved hearing the groans it drove out of him, the way taking it visibly, physically taxed him, as if it was almost but not quite too much. It was the best sex I’d ever had, so I suppose it was only natural that it should be then, of all times, that we were caught red-handed.

We froze when we heard the front door opening, but there really wasn’t time to do much more than prise ourselves apart and hastily start to get dressed. When Sarah opened the living room door, I’d managed to fasten my trousers, but I was still shirtless, and Chris was still naked, standing there with his shirt draped over his groin like a fig leaf.

She didn’t say anything, and neither did I. We just looked at each other. Her eyes flicked to Chris, and she began to look nauseated.

“ _Him_ ,” she said, looking at me again, “of all the people you could have picked, you picked him.”

I thought it was an absurd thing to say. Of course it was Chris, who else would it be? But I didn’t argue. I just nodded and said, “Yes.”

She turned around and walked out without another word. The front door slammed behind her, so hard it seemed to shake the whole house.

“Well,” Chris said, with an odd little smile, “that went better than I expected.”

“I expect she’ll have more to say about it when she comes back. It must have been quite a shock, discovering that she’s not the only one sleeping with you.”

He laughed, so lightly and delicately it was almost a giggle. “Oh, I’m not sleeping with her.”

“What?”

He smiled. “I’m not having sex with her.”

“Oh. Well, I did suspect you’d drifted apart.”

“No,” he said, shaking his head. “I mean I’ve never slept with her.”

I looked at him, quite baffled. “Why not?”

“I don’t like women.” He laughed again, evidently enjoying the confusion. “That does tend to put a dampener on things.”

“But…” I sat down on the sofa, and tried to collect my thoughts into something coherent. “But you’ve been seeing her, haven’t you, for months?”

“Yes,” he said, “but it was all very chaste, at least from my end.”

“I don’t understand. Why would you go to all that trouble, if you don’t…”

He shrugged. “I like stringing them along. It’s quite entertaining, really. I like the look on their faces when I reject them. It’s like seeing a spoilt child being finally denied by an indulgent parent. You should try it, if you get the chance.”

“You’ve done this before?”

“Oh, yes,” he laughed. “But it doesn’t usually go on for as long as this has. Normally I put them out of their misery after a few weeks, but then, I don’t usually get involved with the boyfriend as well. You complicated things a little.”

I looked at him, at that mocking smile, those bright, sparkling eyes, the languorous grace of his body, still naked, still bearing the red marks and bruises I’d given him, and I knew I should find his confession abhorrent. It should have killed my feelings for him. I’m not a malicious man, I don’t enjoy people’s suffering. I’m a good person, underneath it all. But I looked at Chris, and as much as I tried to dislike him, I couldn’t. I don’t know if it was the resentment I felt for Sarah personally, or the bitterness I had begun to harbour towards straight people in general, or just the sheer overwhelming desire I felt for Chris, but the end result is that I search myself for even an ounce of moral opprobrium, and found none.

“Well,” I said, after what felt like an hour of thinking it through, “how do you want to handle things, now she knows?”

“However you like.” He shrugged again. “It’s up to you.”


	7. Chapter 7

Sarah stayed out for the rest of the day, and when she came home, she’d obviously been drinking. She was always argumentative when she got drunk, so I knew to brace myself as soon as I smelled the cloud of alcohol fumes that preceded her. What I didn’t expect was how quickly and viciously she would aim for my weak spot.

“So,” she said, standing in the doorway, “are you detransitioning, then?”

“What? No,” I said, taken aback. “What a bizarre thing to ask.”

“Why’s it bizarre? You like men now, don’t you? Maybe you’ve changed your mind about other things as well.”

“Don’t be stupid.” I stood up, facing her, with my hands on my hips. “Of course I’m not detransitioning. I like men, as a man. Do you think cis gay men are all closeted trans women?”

She ignored that, and changed tack. “Well, how long have you been like this? Is it the hormones?”

I couldn’t help laughing. “No, Sarah, T didn’t turn me gay. Nothing turned me gay. I just _am_.”

“Gay,” she said, “not bi? You’re telling me you don’t even like women in the first place? Have you always been that way? Were you lying to me right from the start?”

“I’ve never lied to you.” I felt angry now, positively furious, that I was being painted as the villain. “Things changed over time, and I didn’t tell you because I knew how you’d react. But,” I said, trying to emphasise the distinction, “I never _lied_ to you.”

“Is he the first one? Have there been other men? Do you… Do you fancy Dale?”

“Jesus Christ, Sarah!” My hands were balled up on my thighs, my nails were digging into my palms. I wanted to break something. “ _No_ , I don’t fancy every man in a five-mile radius. Stop being so stupid.”

 “You’re right, I’m stupid. I must be stupid, never to have realised. Everyone probably knew all along, except me. It’s obvious now, I mean, look at you. You’re hardly the image of a red-blooded man, are you?”

“Oh my god, give it a rest.” I felt myself bristling like a threatened cat. “You’re just bitter that I was fucking him, while you were pining away like a sex-starved schoolgirl.”

The look on her face was pure horror, which quickly faded to anguish. She started to cry. “How could you? You knew... You knew I…”

I thought of what Chris had said. She really did look like a spoiled child, crying that someone else had more toys than her. I didn’t find it amusing, though. It was disgusting.

“I want you out of the house by the time I get home tomorrow,” she said, between sobs. “I don’t care about this month’s rent. Just get out.”

“Gladly,” I said, pushing past her to go upstairs. “In fact, I’ll leave tonight.”

I packed a bag, while she sat in the living room, and then I caught a taxi into town. My first thought was to go to Chris’s place, but I decided against it. I didn’t want to talk to anyone that night. I just wanted to think. So I booked myself into a hotel in the town centre, emailed work to let them know I’d be off sick the next day, and tried to get some sleep. In the morning, I woke to a text from Chris, asking me to call him.

“Are you okay?” I said, as soon as he picked up.

“Yes, in fact I was going to ask you the same thing.”

“You’ve heard, then?”

“She sent me a rather colourful text last night,” he said, sounding much less amused than the last time we’d spoken. “Are you still at the house?”

“No, she threw me out. Which is fine, really, logistically. It’s her name on the lease anyway, so leaving is pretty much painless.”

“Logistically, yes.” There was a pause. “How are you feeling?”

“Tired,” I said, “but basically happy. I just need to figure out what I want to do next.”

“Do you want to come round?” He sounded ever so slightly desperate, as if he was the one who needed to be comforted.

“Thanks for offering, but I think I just need a bit of time to myself. To think it all through, you know.”

“Oh.” Another pause. “Oh, okay, that’s fine. Well, if you change your mind, you know where I am.”


	8. Chapter 8

The logistics of moving out really were quite painless. I stayed in the hotel, and went over to the house in the evenings to slowly pack up my things. It took me a few days to find a flat in the area, and it was more expensive than I would have liked, but I took it straight away. I just wanted to get started building my new life, and any expense, no matter how egregious, seemed more than worth it. I went to work pretty much as normal, except for that first day. I was open with my colleagues about the fact that I was splitting up with Sarah, but I didn’t tell them why. I think they assumed that she’d cheated on me, which I suppose wasn’t a million miles away from the truth.

I didn’t contact Chris for almost a week, until I’d settled into my new flat. He texted me every other day, checking on me, saying he hoped I was okay, and even rang a couple of times, but I didn’t respond. I felt that if I rushed into seeing Chris again, then the breakup with Sarah would be all about him, and not about me. I needed to feel that I was in control. So I spent my spare time unpacking, buying things for the flat, and reading. I was still working my way through the last novel Chris had recommended to me, so I suppose in a way he was with me despite my attempts to shut him out.

Then at the weekend, I replied to his latest text, reassuring him that I was okay, and inviting him over to the flat. Just like the old days, he was at my door within the hour.

“Come in,” I said, ushering him in, “make yourself at home.”

“Is that all you’ve got to say?” He stood in front of the tiny sofa, and gave me the most nakedly hostile glare I’d ever seen on his face. He looked sallow, almost ill, and his eyes were slightly bloodshot.

“What do you mean?” I moved towards him, and put my hand on his shoulder. “Are you okay?”

“Am I okay? No, of course I’m not okay!” He didn’t shake my hand off, but his shoulder was rigid with tension. “I’ve been so worried, I thought—I didn’t know if, if…”

“If what?”

“If you’d gone back to your girlfriend, if you’d drunk yourself into the hospital, if you’d thrown yourself off a bridge, how should I know?”

I shook my head. “Did I really seem that upset?”

“They never do, until they’ve gone off the deep end,” he said, pushing me away.

“I didn’t mean to worry you. I just… Needed some time to think, I suppose.”

He folded his arms. “And you couldn’t send me even one message letting me know you were okay?”

“I didn’t think to,” I said, “I mean, I didn’t think you’d be worried.”

“My god! Is there anyone more self-absorbed than an ex-heterosexual?”

“I’m sorry.” I put my hands on his shoulders. “Look, I didn’t mean to frighten you, but I don’t really know what I’m doing, Chris. This is all so new to me.”

“What is? Treating someone decently?”

“No,” I said, instinctively ready to argue. But the hint of tears in his eyes changed my mind. “Well, yes, I suppose so. I didn’t treat Sarah very well, did I?”

“You were a lying, selfish, emotionally-frigid scumbag.” He shook his head. “I don’t care how you treated her, but if you pull the same manoeuvres on me you’ll regret it.”

“Alright.” I nodded and held my arms out. “Forgive me?”

“This time,” he said, and leaned into my embrace.


	9. Chapter 9

Those first few months with Chris reminded me of my first semester at university. So much to experience, so much that had been out of bounds, now laid open to me. I could fill my bookshelves with gay paperbacks, the books I’d been covertly interested in for years, the ones I’d had to hide from Sarah, like a teenager hiding porn from his parents. I could spend time just quietly inhabiting queer space, holding hands with my boyfriend in safe environments, making eye contact with other men who might be queer, not even really cruising, just looking for recognition. And I could have sex with other men, other boys, aside from Chris. It wasn’t easy, obviously, and every time I fired up the apps I wished I had thicker skin, because one horrible message from a transphobe could shake me up all day. But despite all the unpleasantness, I had more sex in those few months, more _satisfying_ sex, with the kind of partners I really wanted, than I’d had in years.

I was happy, as long as I didn’t think too hard about exactly how I’d arrived here.

Sometimes I thought about how different my life would have been if I’d come out as gay earlier. What if I’d transitioned as a gay trans man instead of a straight one? What if I’d had to lie to the GIC and pretend to like women, instead of cheerfully ticking all the right gatekeeping boxes? What if I’d had a boyfriend rather than a girlfriend when I first started to pass as cis? What if I’d grown up thinking I was a broken straight girl, instead of a broken gay one? Would it have been easier, or harder?

And I thought about my twenties, and what a waste it was to have spent them pretending first to be a gay woman, and then to be a straight man. The flowering of my youth, absolutely squandered. I would have made a beautiful young gay man. That was the thing that really hurt. The wasted potential. I wasted forty years, half my life, on nothing.

So my intention with Chris was to make up for lost time. I threw myself into socialising with him, although like Chris I didn’t touch the drugs, and I kept my drinking moderate. He and I were exactly the same in our need for control. We sat at the centre of his coterie, mildly drunk while everything whirled around us, and just watched. Just being around so many other gay men was invigorating. I loved to watch the boys letting their hair down, dancing, singing, telling bawdy jokes, because it gave me such a strong feeling of _life_ , of unrestrained flourishing. It felt like being a caged bird suddenly set free, watching the rest of my flock, seeing my freedom reflected in their wheeling and circling. I don’t think I’d ever felt more alive.


	10. Chapter 10

I wasn’t the oldest man in the room, but I must have been in the top three. Most of Chris’s friends were in their twenties, with perhaps a handful of guys who’d skated past their thirtieth but weren’t admitting it. The only man clearly older than me was the partner of the boy who was throwing the party, and he was paying so little attention to what was going on around us that he really might as well have not been present. He sat on the sofa next to his boyfriend, barely looking up from his phone while the boy prattled on. Chris and his friends were telling each other stories about past escapades, most of which I’d heard at least once before, so who knows how many times that older man had heard them. No wonder he winced every time the boys screeched with laughter. It was his house, after all, and here he was surrounded by shrieking twinks who kept spilling white wine on his carpet. At his age I’d have just wanted a quiet night in.

I’d made my mind up quite early on that I would never ask Chris to move in with me. Even if I eventually traded in my flat for a house, even if I had ample room for him, even if the idea of setting up a household with him seemed tempting, that was a line I wouldn’t cross. I had no qualms about spending money on him, buying him gifts, perhaps even subsidising his lifestyle to some extent. But I wouldn’t share a home with him, or with anyone else. Too much could go wrong.

“And _he’s_ up to his old tricks, as well…” A blonde boy nodded towards Chris, and a ripple of giggling spread through the group.

“Tricks?” Chris smiled. “Haven’t got time for tricks these days, hun.”

“Don’t play innocent, you know what I mean…” The boy’s glossy lips twisted into a smirk. “It’s all over your Insta, isn’t it? Anyone with eyes can see what you’re up to, _again_ …”

I wasn’t on Instagram, and I had no idea what the boy meant, but I didn’t want Chris to lose face in front of his friends. I smiled amiably, as if I understood everything and was completely unflustered.

Chris just shrugged, but the other boy wouldn’t let it drop.

“Doesn’t it bother your other half?” The boy turned to me before Chris could answer. “Don’t you care if he’s stirring up drama?”

“Drama?” I said, as nonchalantly as I could. “You’ll have to be a bit more specific.”

“Baiting that woman he works with,” the blonde boy said, “stringing her along like he’s going to turn straight especially for her.”

I suppose it hadn’t occurred to me that Chris might do it again. Perhaps I thought he’d done it out of boredom in the past, and now we had each other there would be no need for idle amusements.

“No,” I said, slipping an arm around Chris, a little tighter than I usually would. “It doesn’t bother me at all.”

After the party, when we were alone at my flat, I asked Chris how far he’d gone with it this time.

“Oh, I’m only at the start of the process with this one,” he said, nestling against my chest. We’d had sex as soon as we got home, and I’d been happy to leave the talking until later, because I knew the conversation had a good chance of going wrong.

“The start?”

“Yes,” he murmured, “so far it’s all been mildly flirty comments on selfies, we haven’t even moved to the texting stage yet.”

I nodded silently.

He propped himself up on his elbow, so he could meet my eyes. “Are you alright? You seem really tense.” He grinned at me. “Do you need me to relax you again?”

“This woman’s someone you work with, right?”

He looked at me for a moment, and then laughed. “Oh my god, are you jealous?”

“I’m not jealous, I’m _worried_ , Chris.”

He flopped back down on the bed and snuggled up to me again. “You worry too much.”

“You don’t worry enough.”

“I’m twenty-five!” He laughed. “I’ve got plenty of time to worry when I’m older.”

“Seriously, Chris,” I said, stroking his hair. “I haven’t got a problem with you messing around with these women, but you’ve got to admit it’s risky.”

“You’re being melodramatic.”

“What are you going to do if this woman goes off the deep end when you dump her? What if she’s got a possessive boyfriend—”

“Oh, I _love_ it when there’s a possessive boyfriend. Then you get to mess with both of their heads, two for the price of one.”

“You won’t love it when one of these boyfriends decides to give you a kicking. And what if this woman makes a fuss at work, what if your boss decides to get rid of you both? You’re only temporary, so you’ll be the first out the door, you know.”

“Oh, honestly,” he sighed, “there’s risk in _everything_. If I never did anything dangerous I’d never have any fun!”

“Chris, _please_.”

“Trust me, it’s not that risky. I’ve been doing this for ages, I know what I’m talking about.” He pressed himself against me as he talked, nuzzling my skin, rubbing the smoothness of his cheek against the rough greying hair of my chest. “And besides, if I’d never started doing this, I’d have never met you…”

“I know,” I said, holding him close, “and now you _have_ met me, I don’t want anything to jeopardise what we’ve got. I don’t mind you having a bit of fun, but not like this. I don’t want to spend every night worrying when I don’t hear from you, in case this is the night you finally run out of luck. Is that so unreasonable?”

He was quiet for a few moments. All I could hear was his breathing, shallow and light. Sometimes he reminded me of a bird or a kitten, so small and fragile, with a frantic little heart that seemed to beat too fast for his body.

“No,” he said finally, “it’s not unreasonable. I was being selfish. I’m sorry…” His voice trembled slightly, as if he was on the verge of tears.

“It’s alright,” I said, hugging him tightly. “Just promise me you’ll give all that up. No more schemes, okay?”

“Okay.” He nodded, and buried his face against my chest, so I could hardly hear his words. “No more schemes, I promise.”

I relaxed and kissed the top of his head. Perhaps he was the kind of boy who caused trouble in the past, but right now, with Chris in my embrace, I could do nothing else but believe him.


End file.
